


Of Nightmares and Elfkings

by Whack_the_beetle



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Dark Fairy Tale Elements, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Incubus Theme, Inspired by Poetry, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 06:59:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18806071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whack_the_beetle/pseuds/Whack_the_beetle
Summary: She should have realized that every action has a consequence. Now she is left to deal with the repercussions of her running the Labyrinth that come to haunt her in the shape of a white barn owl.Fairy tale taking a stroll down a very dark alley





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the poem 'The Erl-king' by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  
> Translation Edgar Alfred Bowring

"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!  
For many a game I will play there with thee;  
On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,  
My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold."

 

It took exactly thirteen days for him to appear on her window sill after the little impromptu party in her bedroom.   
For thirteen days after her adventure in the labyrinth she was allowed to enjoy the feeling of victory and relief over having successfully won her brother back.   
A mere thirteen days he granted her before destroying the illusion that life could just go back to normal and the way it had been before.   
On the thirteenth night after coming back from the Labyrinth he was there outside her window in the shape of a white barn owl. Calmly he was perched on the window ledge, gazing at her through the glass with unblinking mismatched eyes. 

If she had at first harboured doubts about his identity, they were soon dispelled when the owl continued to appear each and every single night as soon as it became dark. No normal owl would behave like that. 

Initially she had felt just bewilderment, slight amusement even, at the impossibility of the situation. Was it really possible that her former adversary, and a powerful fairy king at that, would come to haunt her bedroom window in the middle of quite and boring suburbia, and she was the only one who noticed? 

The flippancy wore off pretty quickly though, and was soon replaced with dread.   
What was he doing here and why?   
A trickle of fear started to creep up every time she came to her bedroom at night and found him there staring at her before she had time to shut the curtains in his face.

Yes, these days she would always make damn sure the window was closed and the curtains drawn firmly. Not that this could appease her anxiety when she remembered what a laughable obstacle a closed window had posed to him last time. Even so she asked her father to add an additional lock on her window under the pretext of a fabled streak of burglaries in the neighbourhood and her feeling insecure.   
Probably a futile attempt she fully realized, but then again it would at least prevent other well-meaning people from opening her window at nightfall. 

When days became weeks and nothing happened, she began to relax slightly.   
Obviously, he was not about to burst through her window shrouded in a cloud of magic and power and drag her off to his realm. Not that she was reconciled with the situation, but she was slowly getting used to the sinister sight that awaited her every night.   
It took some more weeks though before she had the nerve to speak to him. The reassuring safety of the window between them, she approached the owl.  
What do you want? What are you doing here? Why can’t you just leave me alone? Go back where you belong; you have no power over me! 

For many nights she would question him in this way, demanding answers and trying to make him leave at the same time.   
He never even changed his position on her window sill, but continued to fix her with his piercing glare. He showed no signs that he had even heard her questions, and he didn’t deign to give an answer.   
She was not sure what she had expected, but his stoic unresponsiveness creeped her out all over again, and with a shudder she averted her eyes, deciding to ignore him in the future. 

That was until one night when she forgot to close her curtains in time. Starting to get changed for bed, she caught sight of her half undressed reflexion in the window, when she suddenly remembered the owlish stalker.  
In that moment she became furious, and in her rage she hurled every random object that was in range at the window, followed by a hearty string of curses.   
He didn’t even flinch when the objects bounced off the glass one after another.  
She had to stop eventually when her parents came to investigate the source of the noise, and with one last filthy look at the owl and a promise that she wasn’t giving up so easily, she jerked the curtain closed.

Her anger took several weeks to abate, and for weeks she left nothing untried to make his little owl life as miserable as possible.   
First she tried every tactic she could think of that would scare away a normal bird - from shooing it, to rapping the glass every time she came into her bedroom, to putting out cat hair onto the window sill.   
She should have known in advance that it would be to no avail. 

Deciding that it was time for more drastic measures, she gathered up her courage one night and slowly opened the window while he was sitting on the ledge, all the while keeping a firm grip on the broom she had clutched in her hand.   
She eyed his form warily, and then lifted the broom with both hands, daring him to come any closer. He watched her impassively until she swung the broom directly at his head.   
In a flash he was gone and perched instead on the tree opposite her bedroom window, the broom ineffectively hitting the empty window sill.   
With a huff of frustration she closed the window, and when she glanced at the glass five minutes later, he was back in his usual place. 

She then gave up the attempts at chasing him away with any conventional methods and instead invested her time in research of ways to get rid of magical creatures.   
But what were supposed to be effective remedies to ward off malevolent spirits and other bothersome creatures of the dark, proved to be woefully inadequate when applied to the creepy owl.   
Neither the salt sprinkled on the ledge nor the iron horse shoes she deposited there would deter him from taking his customary watch every night. Nor did holy water, sage or a specially blessed iron cross do the job.   
In her desperation she even tried garlic, but let off this strategy pretty quickly when her room started to reek of the smelly mess.

Defeated in all her endeavours, she reluctantly came to the conclusion that there was nothing to be done but grudgingly accept his presence.   
So far he hadn’t given any indication that he was out there to harm her, and she decided therefore to establish a watchful cease-fire for the time.   
She would acknowledge the owl with a - if not friendly - than at least polite nod of the head. And very occasionally she would even throw in a few harmless comments about her day or the weather for his benefit.   
Not that she ever got a reply from him, but as the months passed, she found something oddly comforting about his never varying presence outside her window.   
In a life where the only constant variable seemed to be change, she sometimes thought him to be the only sure thing she could rely on. 

And indeed, nothing ever changed about the now familiar sight of the white barn owl on her window sill. The tree behind him bloomed in different colours as the seasons went by, but he would be there - unmoving und unmoved by the passing of time.


	2. Chapter 2

Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?  
My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care;  
My daughters by night their glad festival keep,  
They'll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."

 

For thirteen months the uncomfortable truce held, but one night in midwinter she decided to break it. 

It was a viciously cold night, the naked tree branches congealed into frozen skeletons of white frost underneath a clear and distant star strewn sky.   
She looked at his puffed up form outside her window, and was gripped by a sudden urge of pity.   
Surely nobody deserved to be outside in this temperature?   
Hesitantly she opened the window and felt the cold air hit her like a wall, making her every breath hurt in the warmth of her throat.   
She considered him for a moment, and he stared right back. Making up her mind before she could dwell on the prudence of her plan for too long, she motioned with her hand beckoning him closer. 

Come on in then. You can stay in the warmth for a while. 

He didn’t need telling twice, and as she stepped back to allow him access to her room, he took off in a powerful rush of wings and flew through the window.   
Uttering a screech that sounded suspiciously triumphant to her ears, he circled her once and then dived directly at her head. 

The last thing she saw before she ducked to the ground, covering her face, was the crystal clutched in his talons.   
An odd warm sensation spread from the crown of her head through all of her body, and then the room went completely silent again. 

Shivering in the arctic air, she cautiously lifted her head, ready to fight or flee at any moment.   
There was no need.   
The room was quiet and peaceful, completely devoid of any owls or other creatures. Her head snapped back to the window, expecting him to be sitting in his usual spot, but he was gone. 

For the first time in thirteen months the window sill was empty. 

Rather than cheering at this unexpected turn of events, she felt inexplicably unsettled. Something had changed, and she started to dread the consequences of her rash action. For the moment though everything seemed normal enough, and she pushed her dooms-day assumptions to the back of her mind and went to bed.

That was the first night he came to her bed. 

She woke up in the middle of the night, not quite sure what had roused her.   
Disoriented in the pitch-blackness of her bedroom, she turned over, and that was when she realized that there was something or better someone lying next to her.   
She could feel the weight of another person pushing down the mattress, and when she held her breath, she could even make out the quiet sound of another pair of lungs breathing. 

Terror quickly spiralled out of control, but she didn’t dare to make a single move. She lay on her back stiff as a board, eyes wide open in fear, and as long hours passed, she debated countless times whether to switch on her bedside lamp or simply run from her room.   
Not wanting to alert the entity to her wakefulness though, and all the time hoping that it would disappear without her ever having to know what exactly was haunting her bed, she did nothing and waited in her petrified state. 

At some stage sheer exhaustion took matters into its own hand,s and the next thing she knew was, that she woke up to a bright and cheerful morning.   
She critically scrutinised the space next to her- it was mercifully empty- and couldn’t find any evidence of her nightly visitor.   
Discarding the whole affair as a particularly intense nightmare, she tried to laugh off her silly fears, and quickly slapped down the slight apprehensions that the episode could possibly be connected to the owl incident earlier in the evening. 

But when night came he was there again in her bed - not moving, not speaking, his quiet breathing only betraying his presence. 

She soon started to dread the bedtime hour, inventing excuse after excuse to delay the moment when she had to retire for the night. She also left the light on in her room.   
In vain though - inevitably she would be woken up in the dark to his sinister presence just half an arms-length away from her. 

And with him came the nightmares.

As if her sleep hadn’t been disrupted enough by his nightly visits, he also had to torment her with vivid and often downright terrifying dreams.   
Dreams where she would be chased through the mist by an unseen horror through a labyrinthian structure, fearing at every turn to hit a dead end or running into the waiting arms of her pursuer.   
Other dreams were scary in a more subtle way. She would find herself in distorted and surreal landscapes and rooms, the colours and shapes too bright and sharp, with eerie people or sometimes animals closing in on her and not leaving off, when she tried to get away from them.   
And then there were the dreams of yet another frightening quality, and He usually played a major role in them. They worried her the most.  
If she didn’t bolt up drenched in cold sweat and shaking from fear, jaws clenched in unbearable tension, then she would wake up uncomfortably hot and wanting.  
A powerful aching need would rise up within her and mingle with the shame she felt over the sensations the dreams were capable to invoke in her. 

The sleepless nights were beginning to take their toll, and her family started to comment on the unhealthy sallow colour her face had taken and the dark shadows underneath her eyes.   
Herbal teas, fragrant baths and other homespun remedies were suggested to help her sleep, and she good-naturedly followed the advice, knowing all the while that it wouldn’t help.

One night a few weeks after his first appearance, she woke up from yet another disturbing dream where she had been crawling through high, dew-sprinkled grass into the arms of a man.   
His skin had been hot against her cold and wet one, and when she had looked up to see his face, she instead had opened her eyes to the darkness of her bedroom. 

Unsure at first of what had disturbed her sleep, she suddenly stiffened.   
She could clearly feel the feather light touch of leather-clad fingers caressing her cheek and trailing further down over her lips.   
With a squeak of terror she batted away the hand and hid herself underneath the covers. 

But safety wasn’t to be found there, and to her horror she felt an arm snake around her waist, tugging her tightly against his unseen body.   
All attempts to struggle free from the unwanted embrace were quickly stalled when he just strengthened his iron grip on her.   
So she lay there, panting from exertion and fear, and stared blindly into the darkness. Going back to sleep was out of question, and the night had never seemed to last longer as she watched the darkness slowly recede and the first grey light of day invade her bedroom.   
Finally, the much prayed for sun started to rise, and as the first rays hit her window, she felt herself being released from his hold.

But the comfort of a sunny day felt feeble and inadequate when she thought about the torment the coming night would surely bring. 

Determined not to succumb to sleep, she made herself a pot of coffee and sat down in her most uncomfortable chair with a book.  
As the night wore on, the urge to sleep became nearly overpowering – her general lack of rest and the last completely sleepless night were all of a sudden crashing down on her with full force.   
Several times she caught herself nodding off, head slumped forwards against her desk, and then she would get up and move vigorously for a few minutes to drive away the drowsiness. 

When she opened her eyes next though, the room was dark and she was lying in her bed. Her first thought was that she had yet again dozed off, but then she was fairly certain that she had not moved over to the bed or switched off the light.   
Her heart started to beat frantically, and sure enough she felt an arm tighten around her shoulders.   
She realized that she was once more cradled in his embrace, her face pressed up against his collarbone and one of her hands resting against his chest. She could feel the soft fabric of a shirt and warm skin on her check, and her hand rose and fell with the rhythm of his breathing.   
She was being held by one arm while the other hand stroked her back in slow circling movements, which would have been soothing had she not been so terrified. 

He had never touched her before and she didn’t know why he was doing it now. Confusion and fear clouded her mind while a small part of the back of her head also acknowledged that it somehow felt nice.   
Fed up with exhaustion and the recurring terror at night, she draw in a deep breath, mustering all her courage to confront him, when the hand on her arm abruptly disappeared and a gloved finger was pressed against her lips instead.  
The meaning of the gesture was clear – no speaking – and even if she had wanted to, she felt herself unable to utter a single word. 

Every night from there on she would now feel the touch of his gloved hands on her body. His fingers would stroke her face, her arms and her chest, leaving in their wake a scorching trail of fire and ice that had her skin erupt in violent goosebumps of trepidation and curious anticipation.   
She would let his gentle caresses wash over her, shivering inadvertently when his coaxing fingers would bring her unexpected pleasure, and quickly going rigid again when his touch became too daring.

And then on one of these nights, he kissed her for the first time.   
Her skin was still tingling from his intense touch, warmth creeping up from her belly all the way to her face, when his hands suddenly left her body and cupped both of her cheeks.   
She could feel his breath on her face and before she could react, his lips crashed down on her mouth with a violence. 

She uttered a muffled scream against his mouth and tried to turn her head away, but he had her face arrested in a firm grip.   
Kiss after kiss was administered to her firmly shut mouth, soft and chaste at first, but rapidly becoming more demanding when she didn’t respond.   
His lips then found their way over her chin and further down to her throat. She could feel his tongue lashing at her skin before his teeth bit down hard.   
The feeling was alien and exquisite.

Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and a shiver ran through the whole of her body.  
His curtain of soft wispy hair tickled her face, filling her nose with a strong foreign and intoxicating scent that twisted and entranced her mind.   
Unthinkingly, she locked her arms around his neck, fingers entangled in his silky hair, and brought his mouth down again on hers, making teeth and tongues clash as she hungrily returned his kiss.


	3. Chapter 3

"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy!  
And if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ."  
"My father, my father, he seizes me fast,  
For sorely the Erl-King has hurt me at last."

 

For thirteen weeks now he had been visiting her every night.

His presence in her bed a curse and a temptation in equal amounts, and her health had started to deteriorate as quickly as her night time encounters had escalated.

With revulsion she contemplated her haggard reflexion in the mirror.   
Her hair had lost its shine, and her cheeks had hollowed from the lack of sleep and nourishment, which she couldn’t bring herself to force past her bloodless lips.   
A scarf constantly adorned her neck these days as she desperately tried to hide the bruises on her neck. 

Doctor’s appointments had followed one another; learned foreheads were wrinkled in confusion, and glasses were tapped against stern mouths as experts puzzled over her case.   
But all was damned to futility before they even prescribed their useless treatments, and in vain her family would question what ailed her because her lips stayed firmly locked by his poisonous kiss.

Weary to the bone she sat at her vanity table, trying to block out last night’s events that kept intruding on her preoccupied mind.  
Obediently she had trudged up the stairs to her room, unable to help herself despite the purgatory she knew the night had in store for her.   
Like a siren call she felt the lure of her bed as soon as dusk approached - and no matter how hard she tried to withstand, in the end she would always give in. 

She had long realized that her fear would not gain his mercy, and the terror she had initially experienced during his nightly manifestations had been somewhat dulled by her increasing languor.   
Resigned to the inevitable she had therefore gone to bed, only to be awoken to the same scene that had repeated itself in all the nights she didn’t care to count anymore.   
He had caressed and teased her, masterfully fanning the destructive fire he had kindled to urge her reluctant body into cooperation.

And cooperated she had.  
Long lost was her restraint once she had realized that she could no longer fend off his advances, and the nights were since spent in a frenzy of tangled limbs, heated kisses and loaded touch.

She closed her eyes in shame as she remembered what had followed the now familiar overture.  
Her back had been pressed up against his chest, closely held there by his arm, head thrown back in rapture as his lips had grazed her throat.   
Suddenly, she had sensed his hand stealthily creep up her leg, further and further up her thigh, pushing along the hem of her nightgown until her shivering legs were exposed to the cold night air.  
Horrified and faintly nauseated she had realized what he was trying to do, where he was trying to get, and had started to wriggle in the confines of his arms, one hand struggling to yank the gown back down.   
With a low hiss into her ear he had tightened up his hold, effectively pinning her arms down her side, and viciously bit the sensitive skin of her neck in punishment for her defiance.

Chastised into surrender and trembling in apprehension, she had waited for his hand to finish its progress to the top of her thigh, smudging on its path the treacherous rivulets of moisture that had started to run down her legs without her ever giving them permission to do so.   
She had grabbed the sheets convulsively, balling them up in her fist, when his relentless hand had reached the apex of her thigh, and pushed aside the last layer of protective fabric.   
A gasp had escaped her lips when the cool leather had made contact with her overheated skin, and then, in one single moment, her whole existence had narrowed down, consisting only of the thrilling sensation his intrusive finger was able to induce.  
Gradually the heat had become unbearable, and violent tremors had shaken her body before the spell that kept her enthralled was finally broken, and her world had dissolved in a whirlwind of colours.

She buried her face in her hands as remorse and arousal welled up inside her. How she hated her body for its betrayal and the pile of sin it had become, craving even now what surely would soon be her death.

All too clearly she could see now the many mistakes she had made.   
Wishing away her brother had been the first one; thus alerting this nightmarish entity to her presence in the first place, and awakening something that would have better been left sleeping and forgotten.   
And then in a whim of misguided pity she had been foolish enough to invite him in when before he was barred from entry and from doing her any harm.   
Once allowed access, he had easily ensnared her in his net of desire and intimidation, seducing her innocent body until she had become so hopelessly entangled that she couldn’t find the strength anymore to resist. 

Yes, before long now her fate would be decided, one way or another, that much was clear.   
She couldn’t shake off the feeling of foreboding that had crept over her in the morning when she considered to what new level of depravity her situation had decayed to in just one night.   
And then there was the matter of her body withering away before her eyes. She even drew a tiny bit of solace from the fact that her physical condition was so rapidly   
declining. At least her suffering would find an end - sooner rather than later.

She stared out of the window and wished with all the bitterness of hindsight that she could still make out the white shape of the barn owl sitting on the window sill. If only he would still be sitting there, damned to gape at her ineffectively through the glass, if only she had never let him in.

It was late and the house was quiet - everyone else had long gone to bed - and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to fight the crushing exhaustion for much longer. Already she felt a desperate need for sleep and something akin to a stabbing pain whenever she chanced to look in the direction of her bed.  
Slowly she got undressed, taking in the familiar belongings in her bedroom, and her heart clenched with a sudden keen sense of fondness and yearning for them. With a heavy sigh she gave them one last swift glance before she switched off the light and crawled into her bed.  
Burying her face in her pillow, she deeply inhaled the comforting scent, trying to ignore the whiff of something otherwordly that had taken root in her bedding over the last few weeks. Quickly her lids became heavy, and she drifted off to a fitful slumber.

She jumped awake a mere hour later with a strangled cry, her arms flailing helplessly in the air as she still tried to fight off the unmentionable horrors of her most gruesome and intense nightmare yet. An inadvertent tear ran down her cheek, and her breath kept coming in racking half-sobs.  
In a gesture that was almost tender, a thumb swept over her cheek to wipe away the tear, making her aware of his dreaded presence by her side.  
As if possessed by a malignant demon, she suddenly threw herself at him with reckless abandon and snuggled her face against the hollow of his throat, bizarrely seeking comfort from the creature responsible for her martyrdom. But it did not matter – anything and anyone to drive away the excruciating pictures in her head.

The moment of dream induced weakness soon took its revenge though when he understood it as an invitation to unleash a yet unparalleled assault of caresses upon her.   
She was thrown on her back, and her mouth was claimed in fierce, open-mouthed kisses while his hands explored every inch of her body. She started to feel dizzy from the myriad of sensations that flooded her mind and her body, and her breath came in fitful pants as the sickly desire he instilled spread through her veins.

All of a sudden the nightgown was yanked up and above her head, accompanied by the foreboding sound of tearing fabric, and her protesting exclamation was muffled by a leather gloved palm. She started to frantically thrash against him, but he caught hold of her wrists, twisting them in a vice like grip above her head.  
Helplessly incapacitated, there was nothing she could do to prevent the whole of his body descending on top of her like the vault of a grave, the heat of his skin nearly scalding as he pressed himself flush against her chest.

Pure undiluted fear flared in her head when he let go of her wrists and used his hands to push apart her firmly clenched thighs.   
In a last mad attempt she violently tried to throw him off. Using both of her hands she pushed his chest with all of her force the moment she felt the smooth skin of his legs brush against the inside of hers. But nothing moved the dead weight he was, and with a forceful thrust of his hips blazing agony exploded inside her and rippled through all of her body as if she had been impaled with a red hot iron poker.

All sense and all sight vanished in the world of crippling pain and unbearable pleasure he was inflicting upon her with every move. And just when she thought she could take no more, her bedroom started to fade at the edges. Her soul drifted briefly over the white shapes of entwined bodies in her bed before everything slowly blacked out as she drowned in a dark funnel of sensation.

The last morning of the thirteenth week dawned and sent tentative fingers of daylight through her window, slowly illuminating the tangled sheets and stains of blood on the empty bed in her room.   
They remain the sole and mute witnesses to the scene that has taken place the night before, clearly stating and yet never revealing the fate that has befallen the girl, who gave up her power to become his slave.


End file.
